For students with dyslexia, reading regular fonts can be tricky, especially ones with serifs, like Times New Roman, a ubiquitous font that teachers often require. Serifs are small lines attached to the ends of letters that can make letters confusing for dyslexics. As an example, this sentence has serifs.

This one does not (hence the term “sans serif’ for fonts without them). See how the letters are more clear and simple?

One work-around to make reading easier for dyslexics is to use sans serif fonts like Arial and Verdana, which are widely available in word processing programs. Even better is getting a font designed for dyslexics. There are a few options, and you can download these free fonts to use in Microsoft Word or Pages. (Right now, Google Docs doesn't support custom fonts.)